Kabul, 20 December 2016 – Central Statistics Organization (CSO) of Afghanistan launched the highlights of Herat Socio-Demographic and Economic Survey during a press event at CSO.

CSO with the support of other government entities and the people of Herat conducted the SDES in Herat, as the tenth province that was covered with the technical support of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The SDES is designed as a long term project to gradually gather information on population from all 34 provinces. This survey has also built CSO staff capacity in conducting large scale surveys. SDES provides village level data for local development policy and planning.

THE MAIN OBJECTIVES OF THE SURVEY ARE:

• Gathering data for evidence based decision making, policy, planning and management,
• Providing data for business and industries,
• Providing data about vulnerable populations,
• Providing data for informed humanitarian assistance, and
• Availability of data for research and analysis,

The SDES is conducted in a way that it covers every other household (i.e. 50%) in a given area with survey questionnaires and the remaining every other households are asked the name of the head of the household and the number of members of the household.  

SDES GATHER INFORMATION ON:

• Age, gender, education, literacy, employment issue, people on jobs, fertility, mortality, birth registration, parents’ living status, housing characteristics (some of the indicators gathered are similar to those gathered in a census).

One of the major differences of the SDES with other surveys is that data for the SDES is gathered at the village level.

Some findings of Socio-demographic and Economic Survey include:

• The total population of Herat 50.1% is male and 49.9% is female. Herat Provincial Capital comprises 40.1 percent of the total population of Herat province. 
• Youth aged between 15 – 24 years old comprised the biggest age group among all the age groups in Herat while age group (10-14) comprised 14.3% of the total population of Herat. There were 100 women for every 101 men.
• Literacy rate for people aged 15 and above is 42.4%, while among youth between the ages of 15-24, it is 61.2%. Literacy rate among the population 10 years old and above is 47.9%. Birth registration rate in Herat is 41.5%.
• Around 4.7 percent of the Herat population 5 years or older at the time of the survey had at least one functional difficulty in seeing, hearing, walking, remembering, communicating, or self-caring.
• Percentage of population with economic activities was at 41.8, which means they were engaged in economic activities in the last six months and more.
• 55.3% of the population was not engaged in economic activities for the past 12 months before the survey.
• Among the population not engaged in economic activities 75.1% were busy at home and 17.4 percent were busy in studying.
• In Herat province among married women aged 15 or above, 9 out of ten (90.4%) had given birth.
• Herat city had the highest ratio of married women (91%) between the ages of 15-49 who had given birth.
• Mortality in the past two years before the survey was 33,000 deaths, where mortality was higher for men (59.9%) than for women (40.1%).
• Newborn mortality 1 year before the survey comprised 20.5% where male infants made the higher number of infants deaths 57.2% than female infants (42.8%).
• 30.2 percent of the total mortality were children below the ages of 5.
• Average household size in Herat was 5.7 people.
• LPG was the main source of energy (46.9%) for cooking in the households.
• 96.1% of households in Herat had access to city power in their houses.
• 60.3 percent of households in Herat Province reported to be having an improved sanitation toilet facility.
• 82.4 percent of households in Herat had access to improved water resources.

Central Statistics Organization of Afghanistan would like to thank the people of Herat who took part in successfully conducting the survey and hopes that policy makers and planners will use the findings of this survey to improve the lives of the population in Herat.

For more information: Central Statistics Organization of Afghanistan

Phone: 0202104338 / 0202104093 / 0202104095